It was not difficult to hide the preparations for his family’s flight amidst of all the other unusual goings-on. He had yet to inform Rightauger of the plan, but he would wait until the time approached. Rightauger would heed his father’s last wish, or so Yorvig hoped. Two days after the owners met, Yorvig, Sledgefist and two of Sledgefist’s trusted Hammers took the Under Way beneath the river, across the valley, and up the stair over five hundred feet beneath the slope of the ascending ridge. They trod in silence and lamplight until they reached the outer door. It was just wide enough that a dwarf could fit through sideways. The door opened into a cleft in the rock sheltered by dense rhododendron and spruce, as the dwarves had not cleared the ridge so high. The slope was steep and rocky, there, and when he could still survey the country from atop the tower, he had seen no signs of ürsi encampment this high. But things could have changed.

Yorvig knew there was a point ten or so yards from the door where he could get a glimpse of the valley while remaining sheltered in the shadows and fractured bedrock. He had made this trip to ensure his family would not emerge into a trap or the midst of an ürsi camp. He had told Sledgefist it was merely to get a good look of the valley to prepare for the sortie.

“Stay here,” he told the two Hammers—Sledgefist would argue if Yorvig told him to stay, so he didn't bother. The two brothers crept down through the rhododendron as quietly as they could. They felt the warm spring breeze searching through the branches, and the sun shone. It should be a time of planting and lambing and the drinking of fresh sap beer. There was no joy in this spring.

Sledgefist grabbed Yorvig’s shoulder and hunched down. Yorvig followed his gaze through the last of the rhododendron. There was a shape ahead, sheltering in the rock overlooking the valley in the shade of a spruce, just as Yorvig had intended to do. The figure wore brown clothes and a hood, and he was built like a dwarf—he was a dwarf. The figure turned slightly to look south along the river and they caught a glimpse of a matted beard falling below a gnarled and rusted warmask.

A Jackal of the Waste!

“Do not be afraid,” Yorvig said in a quiet and even voice. He saw the Jackal’s whole body tense. “Do not be afraid, we are dwarves.” It was obvious, considering he was speaking their language. The Jackal rolled over and stared at them, then he lurched toward them in a crouch. A long blackened steel tube cased in carved wood hung from a strap over his shoulder. At the end of the tube, a narrow blade curved like some kind of spear-sickle. In his belt was a dagger and an axe.

“Who are you?” he said. “Are you from Glint?”

As soon as his words reached them, so did his smell. Sledgefist and Yorvig recoiled.

"Shit!" Sledgefist said, gripping his hammer.

At first, the Jackal hesitated, and then he seemed to realize what was the matter.

"It is only their smell," he said, coming to crouch next to them. The smell made Yorvig's whole body tense. The dwarf looked like he had bathed in ürsi blood, and maybe more than just blood. His clothes and leathers were stained. His beard was braided and the braids clung matted together.

"Did you do this on purpose?" Sledgefist asked, aghast. "How could you defile yourself like this?"

"I did what I had to. Everything else is sentiment."

A Jackal, indeed, Yorvig thought.

"It is defilement!" Sledgefist said.

Yorvig raised his hand to stop Sledgefist.

"Are there more of you?" Yorvig asked.

“Are you from Glint?" the Jackal asked again. "Where did you come from?”

“Ay yes, and there is a tunnel.”

“Then let’s get under stone. Talk then.”

They hurried back through the rhododendron. Sledgefist’s two Hammers looked shocked when three returned instead of two, and then repulsed when the stench hit them. They stared at the filthy Jackal, but a command from Yorvig sent them slipping back under stone. Once they were all through, they shut the door behind them.

“What are you doing here?” Sledgefist asked.

“I am a Jackal,” he said.

“Of course you’re a Jackal. I’m not blind. What are you doing here?”

“I need to get to Glint. Can you take me?”

“Why do you need to get to Glint?” Yorvig asked.

“I can only speak to Chargrim.”

“On whose authority?”

“I come from the Council.”

“The Council sent you?” Yorvig asked.

“I will only speak with Chargrim.”

“Are there more of you that need to come in?”

“There are. . .” he hesitated. “There are others two miles west of here, taking refuge in a claim.”

“Should we go get them?” Sledgefist asked Yorvig.

"Do the ürsi know where they are?"

"I fear they must. We must send them aid. And I must speak with Chargrim."

“No one speaks to Chargrim without us knowing why,” Sledgefist said. He wore his full kit of steel beneath a dark cloak, and he looked an imposing figure. It was clear he was no mere prospector at an outlying claim.

“I told you, I come on behalf of the Council.”

“The Council has not proven itself a friend of the Red Ridges,” Yorvig said. That seemed to put the Jackal off-balance. He glanced at the two Hammers to either side.

“The Jackal Lord sent me,” he said.

“Reamer?” Yorvig asked.

The Jackal nodded.

“I am Chargrim,” Yorvig said.

“You?”

Yorvig knew he must make an unusual impression, dressed in plain clothing and holding his odd walking hammer. There was little to mark him as the ruler of a colony. The Jackal hesitated, obviously distrustful of the statement.

“It is true, Jackal,” Sledgefist said. “Your mission has fallen on unusual fortune.”

“What cadre are you from?” Yorvig asked.

“I am of the third.”

“That is Reamer’s old cadre as well.”

Though hard as ever to tell behind the mask, that familiar knowledge seemed to reassure the Jackal.

“Are your others safe for now?” Yorvig asked.

The Jackal nodded.

“They are, for a time.”

Yorvig, Sledgefist, and the two Hammers led the Jackal back down the stairs and through the drift running to the sheepholds. As they opened the last stone door, the smell of manure, lanolin, sheep, and goats poured into the drift, even though the actual pens were a hundred yards away down another drift with a closed stone door.

Sledgefist shook his head.

“I don’t know how they can stand this,” he muttered. Yorvig thought the smell was actually a bit of a relief from the rankness of the Jackal. He also knew that things had been hard for the herders.

“It’s not normally like this,” he said. “The sheep do not normally spend many months on end cramped in the fold.”

Sledgefist shrugged as they started down the drift. A young herder-dwarf stuck his head out of a chamber, curious at who was in the drift. Yorvig stopped.

“I need a private chamber,” Yorvig said. “Is there one here?”

The herder looked startled to be so unexpectedly addressed by the Irik-Rhûl.

“Use this one, Rhûl!” he said, stepping out and motioning inward with his hand. The dwarf's face contorted as he smelled the Jackal, but he tried to hide his repulsion. Yorvig was glad the dwarf had addressed him so, for the Jackal must have caught the use of the title.

“Wait here,” Yorvig told the two Hammer dwarves as he led Sledgefist and the Jackal within. It was a tight chamber, with only a sleeping alcove and an inset bench and table cut into the stone, and barely enough room for the three to stand comfortably. It was obviously a bachelor herder’s private chamber. Yorvig felt a tiny twinge of guilt for bringing the stench inside.

“Why are we stopping here?” Sledgefist asked.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“I do not wish to cause a stir in the mine by bringing in a Jackal covered in filth until I know what this business is about.”

They looked at the Jackal.

“What is your name?” Yorvig asked.

“I am Rothe Stonefoot, of the third cadre of the Jackals of the Waste.”

Sledgefist frowned. Yorvig knew why.

Another Named of Strength fanatic, Sledgefist would be thinking. Yorvig had come to consider the Jackals even stranger than the Named of Strength, but this dwarf had merged the two. It was also strange for a Named of Strength—or anyone else—to use both their true name and a common name together.

“Not even a rinlen comes to me?” Yorvig asked. He didn't care, but he wanted to put the Jackal off balance.

“There were more senior Jackals at the outset,” Rothe said. “But Deep Cut is under siege. They sent only six.”

“Six!” Sledgefist said. “What are we to do with six Jackals?”

Yorvig held up his hand to Sledgefist.

“Who has besieged Deep Cut?”

“Laith and Senland.”

“Impossible,” Sledgefist said. “The humans wouldn’t attack over the Waste. They’d have no hope of storming Deep Cut.”

“We believe it is to extort us for trade or tribute. Food is short.”

“That is the same story here,” Sledgefist said. "The food at least."

“Why would Reamer send six dwarves to Glint, when the ürsi are attacking, and Deep Cut is under siege? What is your purpose?”

The Jackal hesitated for a moment. Yorvig hated those masks, keeping him from judging the dwarf's face.

"We were to bring weapons."

“We have weapons,” Sledgefist said.

“These weapons are. . . they are not like yours. And they are secret. For the ears of Chargrim only.”

“You speak with Sledgefist," Yorvig answered. "First warrior of the Red Ridges, my brother and an owner of the claim.”

Rothe looked at Sledgefist, apparently sizing him up.

“I have heard of you,” he said, and fished for something at his side. He pulled out a leather cylinder, capped and sealed.

“These are dispatches meant for you.”

“Are these your weapons?” Yorvig asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It. . . They. . . The weapons are lost. All save what I carry now.”

"And now you want us to save the rest of you Jackal cowards," Sledgefist said.

The Jackal bristled, and Yorvig raised his voice to head off a fight.

"Enough, Sledgefist."

He glanced again at the strange weapon the Jackal carried, the wood-cased steel tube and its hooked blade. Reamer had alluded to secret weapons. Yorvig had anticipated something. . . big. Maybe a steam engine of some kind, put to warlike use. But if Reamer had sent six Jackals all this way while under such duress at home, the weapons must be worth something. Yorvig looked down at the leather tube he held in his hand. There was little light here to read by—just bits of blue-green miner’s eye giving shape to the chamber.

Yorvig opened the door and looked at the Hammers beyond.

“Relight the lamp,” he said. “I need light.”

As one Hammer prepared his flint and steel, Yorvig heard hurried footsteps in the drift. Crookleg and the herder who had given them the chamber came rushing down the drift.

“Rhûl,” Crookleg said. “I can take you to a more spacious chamber if you need. Welcome, but is there something wrong?”

Yorvig could understand why Crookleg would be confused at his behavior.

“I need somewhere with light,” he said, allowing Crookleg to be hospitable, even though Yorvig was impatient.

“We could go to my own hold—” Crookleg began, but Yorvig shook his head. Crookleg’s hold was across the river in a much more populated fold.

“I do not want attention drawn. Just light.”

The Hammers ignited some tinder and lit the wick of the lamp. Crookleg looked truly distressed. He could have no idea why Yorvig had made a surprise visit to the sheepfolds and had taken over a lowly herder’s chamber. “Bring the lamp, Crookleg,” Yorvig told him. Crookleg was something of a patriarch among the herders, and he had always been reliable, ever since the early days.

"Seven fires," Crookleg muttered under his breath as he entered the chamber, but he held the lamp high while Yorvig broke open the seal on the end of the leather tube. He slid out the rolled parchment. There was damp at the edges, but they were still legible as he unrolled them. He read for a time, his lips moving.

“What is it?” Sledgefist asked. Yorvig shook his head and kept reading. He had learned long ago and paid good gold for the teaching of the speaking runes, but he had never gotten particularly fast at it.

"Chargrim. If you read this, it is the last resort. This is the recipe for the Black Fire. It is the best aid I can give. Either we fall or we conquer. Reamer."

Yorvig raised an eyebrow.

"What is Black Fire?"

"It is a powder that ignites."

Yorvig squinted.

"A powder?"

“Here.” The Jackal pulled the strange weapon off his shoulder. “Into the drift.”

They followed him out and back to the stone door that led to the stairway up the ridge. Rothe asked for the door, and Yorvig nodded for the Hammers to oblige. As it was unbolted and hauled wide, Rothe set the carved butt of the wood-cased tube down on the ground, poured something into the end from a metal cylinder. He did something else with the cylinder and a mechanism close to the butt of the weapon. Lifting the whole device, he placed the butt against his shoulder and pointed it out through the door into the ascending drift beyond.

Light and flame blinded them even as a crack rang their ears and thundered in their skulls. Smoke plumed around the Jackal.

“Shit!” Sledgefist yelled, covering his ears and backing away.

There was a litany of curses from the others as well. A smell like sulfur filled the air. Yorvig’s ears still rang. Rothe turned to them.

“It is loudest under stone,” he said.

“What was that?” Sledgefist asked. “What is it supposed to do, other than deafen us?”

“The explosion can throw a piece of lead faster than eye can see and further than arm can throw.”

“What does this have to do with the recipe?” Yorvig said, lifting the parchment.

“It is the powder that ignites, giving it power.”

Yorvig opened his mouth wide and closed it again, trying to ease the ringing.

“No one speaks of this to anyone,” he said, looking around at all those present. "It will be ill if you do."

As the Hammers closed and barred the door again, Yorvig headed back to the small chamber. He made sure the door was closed behind them before he spoke.

“How quickly do they shoot?” Yorvig asked.

“Twice or thrice a minute.”

“That is little better than a crossbow.” The lighter hand-drawn ones at least, and they killed ürsi readily enough.

“It will pierce all mail, and most plate.”

“That might serve for humans, but the ürsi hardly wear armor,” Sledgefist said. “The noise may frighten them, but not for long, I think.”

“That is not all,” Rothe said. “The powder packed together—it can blast rock. Put in a heavy ceramic jar and packed with bits of scrap metal, it can blow apart, sending fragments and fire and devastation around it.”

“So it is alchemy,” Sledgefist said. That gave even him pause.

“And Reamer sent you to give me this recipe,” Yorvig said, trying to draw out more.

“Ay, yes,” Rothe said, but he hesitated just long enough for Yorvig to suspect a lie. He knew that Jackals could not be trusted like other dwarves, even though he had come to value Reamer over the years.

“Reamer is a friend of mine,” Yorvig said, overstating the truth. “He came here himself many years ago. He is an able and wise dwarf. If he gave you any other purpose, it was not without reason.”

Rothe seemed to consider it for a time.

“We were sent to slay the ürsi they call One-Ear. That was our first task.”

That sounded more like Jackal work to Yorvig, but killing One-Ear was not so easy. Were these weapons so powerful that Reamer thought six Jackals could serve?

Sledgefist laughed, but it was tainted with bitterness.

"And you think six Jackals could do what the hosts of Glint have not?"

“You say the other Jackals are two miles away? How many are left?”

Rothe shook his head.

“No,” he said. “They are not Jackals. My companions did not even make it to the Ridges. Horsemen were scouring the Waste and the borderlands.”

“Then who are the others you mentioned?” Sledgefist asked.

“Refugees.”

“You brought refugees? Here? From where?” Yorvig asked.

“I used them to carry the weapons and Black Fire, but our burden was lost in a flood,” Rothe said, and there was an edge in his voice. “They are safe where they are for a time, in a claim with a shut door. But we must send them aid soon.”

There was something wrong with this Jackal's story, and he withheld. Perhaps it would come out in time, but trust was in short supply for this Jackal. Reamer, though. Reamer had a purpose, and he was no fool. Yorvig looked back at the parchment. There wasn't even a note of explanation from Reamer, just the recipe.

“I would have attempted to assassinate One-Ear myself,” Yorvig said. “But I do not know where he is.”

“I think I might."

Yorvig looked up from the parchment.

“What? Where?”

“About a mile south of here. On the crest of the ridge there is a stand of trees behind a great shelf of rock that juts out to the east.”

“I know the place,” Yorvig said. He had vivid memories of sitting there with Tonkil, looking down over the river-valley. Those had felt like complicated circumstances at the time, but now he knew they weren’t. “Did you see One-Ear?”

“No, but there are huts there with ürsi wearing dwarven mail and bits of plate, and wielding dwarven weapons, and other ürsi come and go like runners.”

During the entire siege, Yorvig had noticed a dearth of chiefs. Where were the yellow feathers? The taller ürsi? They were conspicuously missing. But if One-Ear had set up his own huts in the trees behind Tonkil's Rock, Yorvig would not have been able to see them at all. He tried to remember if he had seen smoke rising from that ridge, but there was smoke rising everywhere from the ürsi fires. From Tonkil's Rock, One-Ear could see the River Gate and the wall on the south ridge of the dell. The kulkur must have learned not to get near enough to the dwarves to let them strike.

“How many were there?” Yorvig asked.

“I don’t know for sure. At least thirty.”

“And this is how to make this Black Fire?” Yorvig asked again, looking back at the recipe. The others watched him read.

“Shit!” he shouted. “Saltpeter? Of all the. . .” Yorvig let loose an uncharacteristic string of curses. Rothe’s eyes widened behind his mask, and even Sledgefist looked startled.

“Saltpeter is common,” Rothe said.

“Not here! We have to import all our salts from Deep Cut to preserve food, but we have used our whole stock. We have none left!”

“How much saltpeter does it require?” Crookleg asked, still holding the lamp so Yorvig could read.

“From the look of it, it depends on how much of this powder we wish to make. This formula is for a thousand pound result. It would take seven-hundred and fifty pounds of saltpeter. If only we had known last summer. Shit!”

“There may be a way,” Crookleg said.

Yorvig looked at the herder.

“What are you talking about?”

“The cultivators have saltpeter. I don’t know how much, but they will have prepared it for the spring.”

“What? What are you talking about? I have no record of unused saltpeter in the mine!”

“Well.. . it. . . We do not use it for food,” Crookleg said.

“I don’t understand.”

“It is unclean."

Yorvig stared. Crookleg saw the look.

"When we compost the manure and bedding of the sheep and goats in the folds, we pile it in compost chambers for the purpose. The urine from beneath the pens drains through channels and we pour it there as well. We cover it all with wood-ash to keep down the smell. They used lime back west, but there is no dolomite here.”

Yorvig didn't say a word, so Crookleg continued.

“Crystals of saltpeter form on the top and down in the decayed manure. It is too much to be used directly, so the gardeners leech it from the compost and reapply it as fertilizer as they want.”

Yorvig’s mouth was open. How did he not know this? He knew the gardeners used the composted dung of the sheep and goats for fertilizer, but he did not know the process in its depth. They had brought forth harvests year after year, without him inquiring into the details of the compost.

Crookleg may have misinterpreted Yorvig’s expression.

“It was not to keep it from you,” he said. “As I said, it would be unclean to use it on meat.”

“How much? How much do we have?”

“We would have to ask the gardeners. They were collecting the compost throughout the winter, but they have not been able to plant.”

“You will go to them yourself and find out how much they have. Make sure none is used for anything.”

Crookleg nodded.

“What else is needed?” Sledgefist asked. “Besides the Saltpeter?”

Yorvig looked back at the parchment. He laughed.

“Sulfur and charcoal.”

Sledgefist frowned.

“And?"

"That is all."

"These things. . . do that?”

Yorvig looked at Rothe.

"Is it true?"

"It is."

Charcoal they had in store by the tons, even after the winter. Before the siege, the smoke of charcoal kilns never ceased to rise as the woodcutters pushed back the forest. They had found no seams of coal yet in the Red Ridges.

And sulfur they had in plenty as well, a byproduct from smelting pyrite and galena which they struck from time to time. They only used it for ointments for wounds and skin troubles, and in treating the same on the sheep and goats. They had learned its use from the herders. . . The herders may just prove the salvation of Glint once again. Yorvig needed to get back to his reception chamber. In a ledger there he had a list of Glint's stores, including sulfur and charcoal.

“Come,” Yorvig said. “Back to the mine.”